


My Mom

by harrisonbored



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Han Solo Needs A Hug, Nightmares, Suicide Attempt, ben is here against my better judgement but this is NOT tfa canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 05:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13652157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrisonbored/pseuds/harrisonbored
Summary: “Mama was sick. But not the kind of sick that Han understood, at least not yet. She had been sick since Papa left, but at least she didn’t have the big bruises anymore.Still, Han knew how to take care of bruises. A little ice, a kiss, if it was bad enough, a painkiller.Han didn’t know how to deal with this.”





	My Mom

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the [kimya dawson song](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wVVd3-w8_Ec) of the same name
> 
> Han Solo is my Emotional Punching Bag i love him
> 
> i wrote this over the course of a single day which hasn’t happened in,,, years,,, why the fuck did this come as easily as it did???

_Han picked up the ringing comm. He raised it to his mouth, ready to answer, when Leia’s cold voice cut him off._

_“Have you checked on Ben?”_

_“What?” Han asked._

_“You put him in the bath,” she said, voice crackling. “Have you checked on him?”_

_Han startled. Ben was barely a year old, they never left him in the bath alone._

_“I-I...”_

_“He’s drowning, Han,” Leia whispered, before screaming, “He’s drowning, Han!”_

_Han dropped the comm and ran into the refresher. The tub was filled to the brim with water, far too deep for a baby. Han looked inside the murky water, just able to make out the tiny body at the bottom. Han dove his hands into the water, soaking his shirt sleeves. The water seemed to grow deeper and deeper the further he reached, until he was finally able to grab Ben by his tiny arm, yanking him up by his sweater._

_Ben laid motionless, soaked to the bone, on the floor in front of him. Han desperately tried to resuscitate him, but it was clear there was no saving him._

_He gave a feeble cough, water spewing from his mouth, before going limp in Han’s arms. He wasn’t breathing._

_Han shook fiercely as he rose to his feet, his son’s body still clutched tightly in his arms. As he turned around, he saw a whole hoard of people had appeared behind him. Leia, Luke, half of the senate, Leia’s parents, his_ mother-

_They were all shouting at him, dead-eyed, but all of the sounds blended together and just sounded like an overwhelming roar._

Han sat up in bed, chest heaving. Leia was sound asleep next to him. In a distant part of his brain, he was grateful that at least she was having a restful night. 

He clasped his hand to his mouth, unable to fight back tears. He pushed the heavy blankets off of his lap and ran to the nursery. 

Managing to slow his footsteps just quickly enough that he wouldn’t wake Ben, he stood in the doorway and stared at the crib. Ben laid there, still, but obviously alive. His little chest rose and fell rhythmically, his eyelids fluttering as he dreamed. 

Han quietly walked over to him, leaning on the edge of the crib. Ben stirred a little at his father’s presence, but quickly relaxed. 

(“He can tell when you’re there,” Leia said, putting her hand over Han’s on Ben’s cheek. “I can feel the recognition. Especially when you come in when he’s fussing or asleep, he can tell it’s you, even without seeing you.”

“What does he feel like?”

“He’s happy.”)

“Hey, kid,” Han whispered, so quietly he could barely hear himself. “Had a... Um, bad night, needed to come check on you, for my own sake.”

Han leaned a little bit more heavily on the railing, almost jostling the crib. Ben slept on, though, comforted by Han’s presence. 

“Please don’t die on me,” Han finally murmured. “I will lose my sh- my mind, I will lose my mind if anyone else I know dies on me.”

Han stayed there for a long time, watching Ben sleep. He finally gathered up the courage to reach out and touch him, a calloused finger against a baby-soft cheek. Real. 

Ben’s eyes flicked open, just a tad. 

“Hey, baby,” Han murmured, rubbing his knuckles gently against Ben’s cheek. “Go back to sleep, I’m just checkin’ up on you.”

Han knew Ben didn’t understand, but he reached up and grabbed at Han’s fingers, taking two of them in his fist and dozed back off. 

He stayed like that, his fingers in Ben’s weak little grip, for a long time. If he wasn’t worried about waking him up and upsetting him, Han would have picked him up and carried him around. He desperately wanted Ben’s weight in his arms. 

After finally pulling himself away, Han went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. He stood at the counter, staring out of the window and losing himself in his thoughts. 

_Mama was sick. But not the kind of sick that Han understood, at least not yet. She had been sick since Papa left, but at least she didn’t have the big bruises anymore._

_Still, Han knew how to take care of bruises. A little ice, a kiss, if it was bad enough, a painkiller._

_Han didn’t know how to deal with this._

_Mama spent a very long time in the hospital right after Papa left. She’d had to go after one of her friends found her trying to hurt herself. Han didn’t know what happened, but he remembered seeing lots of blood on the ‘fresher floor._

_Mama had cried and screamed while her friend took her. They hadn’t known what to do with Han, he was too little to stay home with a bloody floor and nobody to watch him, so they’d brought him with them. He sat next to Mama, tried to calm her down._

_“She doesn’t know you’re there, kid!” Mama’s friend shouted from the front seat, her voice tense and almost scared. “Stop wastin’ your energy!”_

_Still, Han reached up and ran his fingers through her hair, the way she always did for him when he had a nightmare or when she wasn’t hurting too badly after a fight with Papa and he was scared from the yelling. She still kept crying and rambling about nothing, but she stopped screaming when he did that._

_Some men in white outfits took her away, leaving Han and the other lady standing in the waiting room._

_“Are you hungry?” she finally asked Han, realizing that it was late, and he hadn’t had dinner._

_Han nodded._

_“I’ll- I’ll find you something. Sit here, don’t move until I come back.”_

_Han complied, watching doctors and other people rush around. Now that he was alone, he could feel his brain finally catching up with what was happening._

_He didn’t realize he was crying until a nurse came rushing over to him._

_“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she asked gently._

_Han shook his head. “I don’t know.”_

_The nurse held him until Mama’s friend came back, carrying a bag from a vending machine._

_“Oh, is this your mommy?” the nurse asked kindly, grateful that someone who seemed to know Han was there._

_“No, um, I’m a friend of his mother’s,” she explained quickly, handing Han the food. “His mother’s... Back there,” she said tactlessly, gesturing to the big, gray doors that the men in white had taken Mama through._

_“Oh.” The nurse’s face quickly drained of color. Han knew she knew what had happened to Mama._

_“I’m sorry,” she apologized softly to Han._

_Han’s face scrunched up. Pity. He could read it all over her face. Han didn’t like being pitied. Yeah, they were poor and Mama was sick, but he wasn’t pitiful._

_They spent the night in the hospital, Mama’s friend leaving when they let Han come and stay in Mama’s room._

_The room was quiet, the curtain dividing her side of the room from another patient’s was drawn back, revealing an empty bed._

_A different nurse came in every couple of hours, checking on Mama and usually Han, too._

_“How’s it going, little man?” asked one nurse, a tall, dark-skinned human with bright blue eyes. Han liked this man, he wasn’t pitying him like every other nurse was._

_“‘M okay,” Han said. “When do I get to go home?”_

_“I don’t know,” the man admitted, “but it’ll be soon, hopefully.”_

_The man was wrong, it wasn’t soon._

_Mama woke up several hours later, but she wasn’t talking, and she almost refused to eat. She acted like she didn’t know who Han was, ignoring him when he tried to talk to her, or hold her hand, or crawl onto her hospital bed._

_They spent two weeks like that. The only time he ever heard Mama speak was at night, when she’d wake up screaming, trying to pull the tube out of her arm. The first few nights it happened, nurses came in and fought with her. The nurse from the first night was there, once, and she came and sat with a clearly terrified Han while they sedated the woman._

_After a while, though, Han could recognize when she was going to get aggressive. He would cross the room and crawl up onto the bed before petting her hair. She’d settle down after about an hour of that, and Han would go back to the padded bench on the far side of the room and go to sleep under a scratchy, hospital blanket._

_A couple of nights, a nurse would come in while he was putting her back to sleep. They would do what they had to do, talk to Han quietly, and then leave. Once, a nurse didn’t get the door closed all the way and he could hear her talking about him._

_“Gods, he’s what, six? If that? And he’s sittin’ in there takin’ care of her like she’s the kid. He’s so little; he shouldn’t have to be doing that.”_

_Mama was released from the hospital, under the promise that her friend never left her in the house unsupervised for more than a few hours, and with a bag of pills that Han knew they couldn’t afford._

_Mama’s friend, who Han had learned was named Alanna, was pretty good at making sure Mama got out of bed._

_“Come on, Jaina,” Alanna mumbled, lifting her from the bed, “if you don’t walk around, your legs’ll turn to mush.”_

_Mama didn’t really seem to care about her legs turning to mush, or anything at all, really._

_She liked to sit in bed and stare out the window. The house was small, but it did have a pretty view of the seaport._

_Han made sure she took all her medicines, and would sit with her for hours on end. She never really seemed to notice he was there, though._

_He heard her speak maybe three times after they came home. She didn’t scream anymore, the medicines made sure she didn’t have dreams at all, good or bad._

_She never spoke to him, though._

_It went on for two years, before Mama died in her sleep when Han was eight. He was sad about it, but it felt like Mama had really died the night she went to the hospital. Her body had just taken some time to give out, too._

_After Mama died, he lived with Alanna for a while. Alanna lived with her son, Jet, and a partially-broken protocol droid who cleaned the house and cooked. Despite being a couple years older than Han, Jet quickly became his best friend. The two of them would build boats together and sail them down the little creeks that would form in the streets during Corellia’s rainy season, and when it was too bad to even go outside, Han and Jet would play pilots inside, chasing each other around with plastic blasters._

_Despite being younger, Han was a good bit taller than Jet, and stronger, too. They would get into wrestling matches that would end with Jet bruised up and achey for days. Alanna would be unusually cold to Han until Jet healed up, including once, when Han had accidentally knocked Jet off the railing they’d been climbing on and Jet had sprained his wrist, locking Han in his tiny cellar bedroom and refusing to let him out to eat. Eventually, Jet made her let him out, but after that, Jet and Han were never allowed to play alone together._

_Han had been living with Alanna for six months when Jet got very sick. They had to take him to the hospital, and for the second time in two years, he slept under a scratchy blanket in a hospital room._

_At least Jet talked to him. He was weak, and had lots of wires and tubes coming out of him, but he still knew who Han was. They’d sit on the bed together, and they would play with with their toy starships. Jet got tired very easily and would take long naps, and sometimes Han would nap with him. Other times, he’d sit up and basically self-soothe by playing with Jet’s hair. Unlike Mama’s thick, wavy hair, Jet had very fine, silky hair._

_All the while, Alanna would watch them warily from her spot on the other side of the room._

_One night, Han had fallen asleep in Jet’s bed, his face pressed up against his shoulder. Jet had gotten so sick that Han had to wear a paper mask over his mouth, but he didn’t really mind. Han woke up when he felt his mask slipping off his face, and noted that Jet wasn’t moving. Or breathing._

_“Alanna!” Han yelled, waking the sleeping woman. “Jet’s not breathing!”_

_Alanna alerted the staff, and nurses and doctors came flooding into the room. They immediately tried to revive him, but their attempts failed._

_Jet was dead. Just like Mama._

_Alanna and Han went home early in the morning. Han hadn’t stopped crying since the doctors had ushered them out of the room to take care of the body. Alanna, on the other hand, hadn’t shed a single tear._

_She stood, staring out of the window. Alanna’s house was up the hill from Han’s old house, so they could see the old building from where they stood._

_Despite all he’d been through, Han was still a child, so he was desperate for some physical comfort. Alanna had held him before, when Mama had died, so maybe..._

_When he reached out and tried to grab her hand, Alanna jerked away like he had burned her._

_“Why do you get to live?” she screamed. “Jaina’s dead, Jet’s dead, but you get to live!”_

_Han stared at her, fat tears running down his face, confused._

_“Jaina didn’t want you! Your sonofabitch father didn’t want you! And he beat her because they didn’t want you, and it killed her!_

_“I wanted Jet more than anything in the world! I tried so damn hard to get pregnant, to have him, and what happens? As soon as you walk into our lives, he dies!”_

_She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You ruin everything you touch. You’re cursed, Solo.”_

_Alanna looked away from him and leaned against the wall. “Get your things and get out of my house. I promised Jaina to take care of you if anything happened, but I can’t stand to look at you.”_

_Han stared at her, frozen in place._

_“Are you fucking stupid? Leave!” Alanna screamed, grabbing one of Jet’s toy starships off the living room table and throwing it at him._

_Han ran down to the cellar, gathered up what little he had, and left through the cellar doors._

“Han?” A small voice jolted him from his thoughts. He turned around and looked at Leia. 

“Hey, Lei,” Han mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” Leia asked, walking over to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. 

“Oh, um, I had a nightmare. Wanted a drink,” he said thickly. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

_No_ , Han thought. 

“You’re gonna make me, aren’t you?” he quipped humorlessly.

Leia shook her head. “No.”

Han sighed. “I’d left Ben in the bathtub. I didn’t even know I’d put him in. He drowned.”

Leia said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against his back comfortingly. 

“I’m cursed, Leia. I kill or hurt everything I touch.”

“What?” Leia asked, pulling away and forcing him to look at her. 

“I- My mom. She died when I was eight.”

“Uh-huh.” Leia already knew this. 

“My father, he used to beat the everliving shit out of her. He never touched me, though. It was like they had a deal: he could beat her as much as he wanted if he never laid a hand on me.

“He left when I was six, and not long after he left, a friend found her in the ‘fresher... She’d, she’d tried to kill herself.”

“Oh, Han,” Leia whispered, guiding him to sit down. He was shaking.

“She wasn’t the same after that. It was like she’d checked out or something. She was physically there, but not mentally. She never directly spoke to me again.”

He stared down at his trembling hands for a long moment. “Early on, before they basically turned her into a zombie with these meds, she used to scream in her sleep. That was the only time she acted like I was even there, because I’d pet her hair until she calmed down. I was six, Lei.”

Leia kneeled down to make eye contact with him. “It’s awful, I know,” she murmured.

“I lived with this other woman, a friend of my mom’s,” Han went on. He’d never told Leia about this before. 

“I was best friends with her son. He was a real sickly kid, all frail and easily bruised. He basically got a really bad virus, then a secondary infection set in, and he had to be taken to the hospital. We were there for about a week before he died.”

“Oh, Han-“

“I-I was in the bed with him, when he died. He was my only best friend, up until Chewie, I guess.”

Death, and being surrounded by death, was not a new thing for Han, even back then. But something about that death had been uncomfortably close to him. Jet was supposed to get better, grow up with him, become a pilot, too. Only Han got to do that. It haunted him, even after fighting a war and witnessing the deaths of countless other people on the job.

“And I- I still worry about the carbon sickness, you know? I still get flares sometimes, even though it’s not anything that comes up in blood tests or... Or whatever. I worry that it’s gonna take me, leave you and Ben. I know you’d be fine-“

“I would not be fine without you,” Leia interrupted. “I would survive, yes, but I would not be fine. At least not for a very, _very_ long time.”

Han nodded, refusing to make eye contact. Leia reached out to tilt his chin to look at her. 

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’m glad you can tell me when you’re upset like this. I understand what it’s like to lose people so suddenly. It never really stops hurting. I understand.”

Han, seldom so vulnerable and open with Leia, welcomed the tight embrace she offered him. She held his head to her chest, and he suddenly felt like he had more in common with the eight year old boy running for his life from the only home he’d ever known than the smuggler turned war hero general. Maybe this is what he had needed.

They stayed like that for a while. Han didn’t cry, having gotten what few tears he had left on the topic out with his panic attack over Ben. Instead, he relaxed against Leia’s shoulder, feeling a little lighter than before. Being around Leia had that effect on him.

After a while, Han heard sound coming from the other room. “Ben,” he mumbled, mouth against Leia’s collar bone. 

“Yeah, I’ll go get him,” Leia said, gently pulling away. She walked quietly toward the nursery, leaving Han alone. She was back as quickly as she left, carrying a fussy baby in tow. 

“He just wanted to make sure that Daddy was okay,” Leia murmured gently, putting her fingers through Ben’s hair. “See, Daddy’s okay,” she said, trying to hand Ben to Han.

“Leia, I’m-” Han began, fully aware of how badly he was still shaking. 

“Just hold him for a minute,” Leia replied. Han reluctantly complied, taking Ben in his arms. Ben immediately calmed down, reaching up to pat Han’s cheek. Han grinned fondly. 

“See? Not cursed,” Leia pointed out. She sat down in a chair next to him, and Han rested his head on her shoulder. 

“Not cursed,” Han agreed. Leia kissed the top of his head.

After all, how could someone who was cursed come out with all this?

**Author's Note:**

> like i said, this ain’t tfa canon so ben grows up, decides the force aint for him, and becomes a pilot or some shit idk


End file.
